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2006. Find The Student That Will Replace The Chalk

Array Binary Search Simulation Prefix Sum

Problem - Find The Student That Will Replace The Chalk

Medium

There are n students in a class numbered from 0 to n - 1. The teacher will give each student a problem starting with the student number 0, then the student number 1, and so on until the teacher reaches the student number n - 1. After that, the teacher will restart the process, starting with the student number 0 again.

You are given a 0-indexed integer array chalk and an integer k. There are initially k pieces of chalk. When the student number i is given a problem to solve, they will use chalk[i] pieces of chalk to solve that problem. However, if the current number of chalk pieces is strictly less than chalk[i], then the student number i will be asked to replace the chalk.

Return the index of the student that will replace the chalk pieces.

 

Example 1:

Input: chalk = [5,1,5], k = 22
Output: 0
Explanation: The students go in turns as follows:
- Student number 0 uses 5 chalk, so k = 17.
- Student number 1 uses 1 chalk, so k = 16.
- Student number 2 uses 5 chalk, so k = 11.
- Student number 0 uses 5 chalk, so k = 6.
- Student number 1 uses 1 chalk, so k = 5.
- Student number 2 uses 5 chalk, so k = 0.
Student number 0 does not have enough chalk, so they will have to replace it.

Example 2:

Input: chalk = [3,4,1,2], k = 25
Output: 1
Explanation: The students go in turns as follows:
- Student number 0 uses 3 chalk so k = 22.
- Student number 1 uses 4 chalk so k = 18.
- Student number 2 uses 1 chalk so k = 17.
- Student number 3 uses 2 chalk so k = 15.
- Student number 0 uses 3 chalk so k = 12.
- Student number 1 uses 4 chalk so k = 8.
- Student number 2 uses 1 chalk so k = 7.
- Student number 3 uses 2 chalk so k = 5.
- Student number 0 uses 3 chalk so k = 2.
Student number 1 does not have enough chalk, so they will have to replace it.

 

Constraints:

  • chalk.length == n
  • 1 <= n <= 105
  • 1 <= chalk[i] <= 105
  • 1 <= k <= 109

Solutions

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class Solution:
    def chalkReplacer(self, chalk: List[int], k: int) -> int:
        total_chalk = sum(chalk)
        k %= total_chalk

        for i in range(len(chalk)):
            if k < chalk[i]:
                return i
            k -= chalk[i]

        return -1

Submission Stats:

  • Runtime: 575 ms (5.97%)
  • Memory: 30.7 MB (6.47%)